anyone else find missing insulation?

have recently relocated fm the Dallas/Ft Worth area. Am considering building out past Centreville, VA off of 50W where new homes are being purchased and built by Ryan, Van Metre, and others. Doing research came across your remarks, which I need to consider regarding the quality of Van Metre, Ryan and other home builders reputations and work ethics.
Any additional recommendations would greatly be apprec.
Thanks in advance.

have recently relocated fm the Dallas/Ft Worth area. Am considering building out past Centreville, VA off of 50W where new homes are being purchased and built by Ryan, Van Metre, and others. Doing research came across your remarks, which I need to consider regarding the quality of Van Metre, Ryan and other home builders reputations and work ethics.
Any additional recommendations would greatly be apprec.
Thanks in advance.

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Van Metre is a quality builder. The only problem we had was with our laundry room. It's to small to fit our washer and dryer, but they are working on fixing it. They have been very responsive to any issues we have had.

Wow, this thread is an eye opener for sure! We live in a Dogwood as well and yes the front of our house and the master bedroom are much colder then the rest of the house. Our gas bills have been hovering around $330!!!

I would love to meet some of the other Dogwood owners to discuss this issue further.

It's interesting to read the problems you have with Van Metre as we've just bought a townhouse in Southern Walk and are "supposed" to move in May/June although I'm pretty sure they mean July/August

We had many of the same problems with our current Centex home and said we would never buy new again. Guess we'll give it another shot. We have been in our current townhome in Sterling for 3 years and have only recently found out that our basement exterior wall is NOT insulated. How ridiculous is that? We had SO many issues with Centex that we will NEVER buy a new Centex home again. They had such a high turnover of Construction managers that we had a new person for every walk through. That's efficient.

I'd like to share my favorite events from them They forgot to run electricity to our fireplace fan so the electrician came out a few months after we moved in and put a hole in the wall to fix it. When Centex workers (supposedly one of them was the new construction manager) came to repair the drywall, they put nails through the new wiring to the fan causing it to trip the breaker everytime we turned it on. Then there was the time that the carpet was peeling away from the stairs and instead of re-kicking it properly, the construction manager used a nail gun in the middle of the step..not even at the seam. Oh memories.

Suffice to say we'll be WAY more nit-picky this time around. And we'll definitely bring a home inspector whether Van Metre likes it or not. Anyone know a good inspector?

We moved into our Fernwood in December and have had three outrageous utility bills (gas - over $350 and electric - over $250). In addition, the bedroom and bath over the garage are extremely cold so I went into the dormer through the access panel (which wasn't supposed to be cut out for us), and found Van Metre did not insulate any of the exterior or interior walls nor the access panel itself. We fear they didn't insulate the garage ceiling and in addition, the master bathroom floor overhang.

As if that wasn't enough, we have a leak running down the entire front of our living room wall and across our entry way which has ruined our new paint job and pulled the siding out from the wall under the porch. Van Metre originally claimed it was ice damming, but with other neighbors experiencing the same thing they are rethinking that statement. I'm going to buy the IR thermometer and see if our suspicions regarding the insulation are correct.

Our initial sales experience with Van Metre was horrific and I have little faith they completed our house to code. I'll post once I've taken the readings and heard regarding the resolution to the roof.

Hi all
this is a very interesting topic, My wife and I are buying a new Spurce in the Souther Walk area, and seeing that the insulation problems you guys are having and having VM refusing to resolve these issues is really making me wonder if we should not buy within Broadlands. Please keep the information coming about this, VM and the rest of the builders should be aware of this. I will certainly bring this up at my meeting with the builder. THey havn't broken ground on our home yet, so I am curious to ask these questions now. Thanks and keep the info coming.

[V]What happened to the newsletter article? Which issue was it in? If you want another member for the people with problems group count us in - use the forum. As far as VM reps - "that's industry standards", "they all do it", "that's not a problem", "that's your problem", "it's fixed just wait" "we can't get good help(no s--- Sherlock", - we've heard and seen them all in the past 4 years that we've been trying to get what we thought we paid for; their people are not the brightest candles on the cake when it comes to work but they sure know how to make excuses, denials and use a cell phone 45 out of every hour they're "supervising" or pretending to work!

this is very interesting news.
We have a Van Metre Home as well - Aspen Model our gas bill is outrageous and at first I thought it was due to the overutilization of our gas fireplaces. After closely montoring it I found it not to be the case. Closer inspection will be underway, I know that our master bathroom is abnormally frigid in the winter (especially now)

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We were looking to also buy a Aspen when they open up lots. Have you been satisfield with your house and the craftsmanship. It seems like everyone has told me that VanMetre is one of the better builders in the area. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Before you think about suing (as nice as the thought is!) read your contract. We have a VM home in Overland Park and in the initial section of the contract, you agreed to waive your right to sue...both parties agree to use binding arbitration to settle their differences.
I assume all are the same these days. Just check it out before you lay out any cash on an attorney.